Never before in our history have Americans been called upon to face three grave threats to our very existence, any one of which could destroy us. We face a disintegrating economy, a weakened defense and an energy policy based on the sharing of scarcity.
Sound like something Barack Obama would say in 2008?
Actually those were the words of our great pal, the Calvin Coolidge to George W. Bush's Herbert Hoover, Ronald Wilson Reagan. In 1980.
While it's great that Barack Obama FULLY recognizes the root problem unlike Reagan did and seems to understand the sorts of solutions needed...
I do hope he would do a better job communicating that relationship to the economy in the upcoming debates and explaining to the American taxpayer just how to pay for it. One suggestion I'd like to add to the mix? Green bonds.
For 28 years we have done much too little about our economic and energy problems and only made them worse by waging two wars with Iraq for oil (Gosh I wish Obama was able to say this out loud), failed to impose enough new pollution-controlling standards and develop cleaner technology for our industries and exported our misguided and dangerous gluttony for oil to the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do to take back the last 28 years.
But like Tom Friedman in Sunday's New York Times, I happen to agree that our country's economic future and the future of planet itself are intrinsically linked (of course world peace in not having to rely on oil imports from oppressive countries that don't like us is a part of that as well) with it being imperative that our next president takes aggressive and immediate action as president to address this pressing issue.
In Green the Bailout, Friedman laments how past stock market bubbles in the railroads and the Internet at least left us with great infrastructure for building our economy going forward while this financial services bubble has only left us with more debt, however he does support the bailout to address the credit crunch even though he doesn't think it does anything to address our overall economic problems.
The point is, we don’t just need a bailout. We need a buildup. We need to get back to making stuff, based on real engineering not just financial engineering. We need to get back to a world where people are able to realize the American Dream — a house with a yard — because they have built something with their hands, not because they got a "liar loan" from an underregulated bank with no money down and nothing to pay for two years. The American Dream is an aspiration, not an entitlement.
What a brazenly honest statement so daring that no politician could ever say it, but I couldn't agree more.
Indeed, when this bailout is over, we need the next president — this one is wasted — to launch an E.T., energy technology, revolution with the same urgency as this bailout. Otherwise, all we will have done is bought ourselves a respite, but not a future. The exciting thing about the energy technology revolution is that it spans the whole economy — from green-collar construction jobs to high-tech solar panel designing jobs. It could lift so many boats.
Indeed it could.
Thank goodness Barack Obama realizes this and has set forth articulating some of what he would do.
But with this latest Wall Street bailout, our country already swimming in red ink after 8 years of Bush deficits, two wars to fight and hopefully end and our foreign creditors becoming more and more hesitant about lending us money I do worry that eliminating the Bush tax cuts for the rich, cutting tax breaks for oil companies or even punitive windfall profits taxes just won't cut it.
Nor will reforming our political contribution laws and instituting lobbyist reforms to crack down on crony capitalism, creating a fairer tax code or cutting wasteful spending for programs that don't work and directing more money for things like weatherization or increasing fuel-efficiency standards be enough when our economy is already so very weak that our tax revenues are almost certainly going to decline and unemployment rates are already at such dangerous levels.
What we need is a patriotic effort to raise capital that the American government can spend on developing green technology and creating green jobs on the quick, while at the same time not leading to us running up deficits and debt so great our country is beset with runaway inflation, similar to what this country did in quickly mobilizing the war effort against Hitler following Pearl Harbor.
What is one way that America was able to do it? WAR BONDS heavily promoted as patriotic by the government, business leaders and Hollywood.
Now obviously this clip would definitely need some reworking with that whole repulsive blackface thing and Bugs Bunny certainly isn't quite the icon he was back in the day but...
-given the cultural phenomenon that Barack Obama is
-given how much his supporters have shown they want to invest in him in their country by donating to his campaign despite the sorry economy
-given how much Hollywood loves him
-given how much average American investors skittish on the stock market and their 401ks could feel comfort in having something to invest in like this
-given the environmentalism market shown by the box office success of "An Inconvenient Truth" and things like carbon offsets
-given what a grave issue energy independence is for the future of our nation
I think it would be a crime for Barack Obama to not use this unique opportunity to give and promote for Americans the chance for them to invest in their own energy independence through the creation of Green Bonds.
Despite how little America has asked of us, and despite our supposed deteoriation as a society since the loss of so many from our Greatest Generation, I believe the American people still want to give back to their country just as much as they did in 1941 and just as much as they did when John Kennedy told us to ask not what our country could do for us, but what we could do for our country.
After 9/11, while Bush's solution was just for everyone to go shopping and all that people felt they could do to support the war effort was buy yellow ribbon magnets for their SUVs that weren't even made in America, I remember the massive blood drives on my college campus immediately following the attack.
Americans want to help in this. They just need to know how. And since Joe Biden isn't allowed to say that rich people should be willing to pay higher taxes out of patriotism, then why don't we give something to the American people that they can patriotically invest in?
Not only that, but it could encourage our American citizenry to be more fiscally conservative of their expenditures and think more about saving for themselves rather than just buying anything they want as instant gratification and racking up ridiculous credit card debts or buying houses that are way beyond their needs or means to pay for.
I know the patriotism FDR helped foster in my grandmother during these times got her to buy her grandchildren U.S. Savings Bonds for their birthdays each year FOUR DECADES after FDR left office and even as she personally and vocally lamented to us the deficit spending by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and those savings bonds and other measures my fiscally conservative parents took in raising us helped us as their children establish a savings mentality where all of us are willing and able to live within our means and also able to take that much more pride and dignity from the work we do.
It worked once.
Why can't it work again? What do you think?